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From anarchy to good practice: the evolution of standards in archaeological computing
2004). It is not feasible to extend such a labour-intensive manual approach
on a large scale. However, if the process can be automated then the dream of
an archaeological Semantic Web becomes a reality (Richards 2006). Once
again, standards are critical to achieving a high success rate in automatically
extracting index terms from the grey literature reports, as the more the reports
adhere to standardised vocabulary the higher the success rate.
5. Conclusion
In summary, there are three types of standards. At the bottom, and least
inuenced by the Heritage sector, are technical standards. These include le
formats, communication and computer standards. In the middle are content
standards. This is the area within which the Heritage sector can exercise innovation,
and must do so to stop stagnation. Finally there are the metadata
standards that support resource discovery and integration. As Steve Stead said
at an AHRC ICT Methods Network workshop held in October 2007:
«The pragmatic result of any work on Standards should be that our
data is consistent, our process documented and our documentation explicit.
If we achieve that then our work will survive as the profession as a whole
will be able to reuse its results. If we fail in any part of this then our data is
damned and can be safely deleted at the end of the project as it is no use to
man nor beast» (Stead 2007).
In conclusion, archaeological computing standards have evolved enormously
in the last 40 years. Far from making them redundant, the Internet
Age and the development of sophisticated search algorithms give data documentation
standards fresh importance. At rst sight one might assume that
the power of search engines such as Google means that structured data and
the use of pre-dened terms have become superuous. On the contrary, and
as anyone who has discovered hundreds of false hits when undertaking a
free text search of the Internet will know, the Semantic Web can only function
if the meaning and relationship of data items is mapped to pre-dened
standardised ontologies that carry international agreement.
Julian D. Richards
Department of Archaeology
University of York
REFERENCES
Arroyo-Bishop D. 1989, The ArchéoDATA Project, in Rahtz, Richards 1989, 69-86.
Austin A., Richards J.D., Pinto F., Ryan N. 2002, Joined up writing: an Internet portal for research
into the historic environment, in G. Burenhult (ed.), Archaeological Informatics: Pushing
the Envelope CAA2001, BAR International Series 1016, Oxford, Archaeopress, 243-251.
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